Posts Tagged ‘D&D Next’

As a D&D child of the 70’s and 80’s, I’d never questioned the rule of the DM. It’s our shared game, but the DM is the glue that holds it together. The DM makes up the adventures (or prepares the published modules) and runs them, adjudicating both the players’ actions and what response the adventure has in store for them. Players know the rules, but don’t have perfect knowledge of how those rules are applied in the game world for any particular situation. In other words, the role of the DM is to rule.

So, the shoe has dropped. D&D Next is announced, and I’m not even finished with the Heroic tier for my bi-weekly Keep on the Borderlands 4E campaign! Not that I’ve been pushing them to advance, as my group has just reached 8th level and I see from my older posts they were reaching 4th at the end of 2009. Granted we’ve had a few breaks for other games (my SotC Jazz-era LoEG game and a short-lived Arthurian D20 Modern game), but I’ve also been throwing a LOT of inter-related stuff at them in game, and since we get at most 3-4 hours per session, progress has been slower than I expected. I think everyone has been having fun, though,so it hardly matters.

Still, since I have plans now into at least the early Epic Levels, considering a transition before I reach mid-Paragon is not something I look forward to. And likely won’t consider, for this group, at least. Since WoTC is talking about an extensive public playtest (or at least more so than in years past), it sounds like I’ll have at least another year and a half to make the decision. As with many others, I figured something of this ilk would be announced for 2014 and the 40th anniversary of the game. I was figuring at D&D Experience in January 2014, but now it sounds like that is being rolled into GenCon starting next year, so GenCon2013 appears to be the odds on favorite guesstimate of the ‘Next’ launch.